<nettime> Lynsey Hanley: What’s the point of growth if it creates so much misery?

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/15/we-can-rebuild-economy-foundations-up



What’s the point of growth if it creates so much misery?
By Lynsey Hanley

Forget the ‘high-skill, hi-tech’ obsession: we should invest in everyday 
services to create a society run for collective good

The Guardian, Monday 15 Oct 2018


The late Prof Mick Moran, who taught politics and government at 
Manchester University for most of his professional life, had, according 
to his colleagues, once had “a certain residual respect for our 
governing elites”. That all changed during the 2008 financial crisis, 
after which he experienced an epiphany “because it convinced him that 
the officer class in business and in politics did not know what it was 
doing”.

After his epiphany, Moran formed a collective of academics dedicated to 
exposing the complacency of finance-worship and to replacing it with an 
idea of running modern economies focused on maximising social good. They 
called themselves the Foundational Economy Collective, based on the idea 
that it’s in the everyday economy where there is most potential for true 
social regeneration: not top-down cash-splashing, but renewal and 
replenishment from the ground upwards.

It hurts nobody to bring local services back into local authority 
control and to divest from outsourcing firms

Foundational activities are the materials and services without which we 
cannot live a civilised life: clean, unrationed water; affordable 
electricity and gas without cuts to supply; collective transport on 
smooth roads and rails; quality health and social care provided free at 
the point of use; and reliable, sustainable food supply. Then there’s 
the “overlooked economy” – everyday services such as hairdressing, 
veterinary care, catering and hospitality and small-scale manufacturing 
– which employ far more people, across a wider geographical range, than 
the “high-skill, hi-tech” economy with which recent governments have 
been obsessed.

For the Foundational Economy authors, focusing on the fundamental value 
of invisible and unglamorous jobs “restores the importance of 
unappreciated and unacknowledged tacit skills of many citizens”. It’s a 
way of looking at economics from the point of view of people rather than 
figures, and doing something revolutionary (yet so blindingly obvious) 
in the process. What is the point of “growth” if the basic elements of a 
decent life are denied to a large and growing number?

Because everybody has these everyday needs, their provision is not – or 
ought not to be – specific to one or a few regions, and is comparatively 
resistant to automation. If applied by government as a central plank of 
industrial strategy, prioritising the foundational economy could 
fundamentally transform people’s quality of life outside London and the 
south-east – which would be the direct opposite of the dire “northern 
powerhouse” template that has only created even more cynicism.

Visions of an economy run for social good, rather than individual gain, 
are being developed by Labour through a series of regional workshops on 
the “new economics”. As the examples of Preston, Enfield and Oldham 
councils have shown, it hurts nobody to bring services back into local 
authority control and to divest from the outsourcing firms whose own 
definition of “growth”’ is extracting profit from social misery.

Any future government will have to take this vision seriously. Take 
Jeremy Corbyn’s promise of “a million climate jobs” at last month’s 
Labour conference, which could be a conservative estimate for the task 
at hand. In 2012, Oxfam reported that 4.7m jobs could be supported and 
£280bn added to the economy if the government invested in retro-fitting 
the entire existing housing stock for lower energy consumption. (It 
could also save a total £8.7bn a year from our domestic fuel bills.) Our 
homes are the most expensive to heat in Europe, and the oldest, with 
more than 60% built before 1960.

A change in thinking is urgently required to bring about a permanent and 
ongoing renewal of the foundations of a good society.

This brings to mind a long-buried yet prescient quote by Raymond 
Williams. In his 1960 novel Border Country, he describes a character 
witnessing “a slow and shocking cancellation of the future” in the wake 
of the 1926 general strike. This quote has been leapt upon in recent 
years by a reinvigorated and youthful left.

It’s as though, nearly 60 years later, we’ve woken up to the idea that a 
better future can be reinstated, but that we have to get it back 
ourselves. Restoring decent basic services for everyone, then keeping 
the bar high for everyone, is a task akin to painting and repainting the 
Forth Bridge, and this alone is enough to keep millions of people in 
stable, valuable work.

For a future better than the one we’re dreading, we need to start 
rebuilding the foundations now.

• Lynsey Hanley is a freelance writer and the author of Estates: an 
Intimate History and Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide
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